


A Day on the Calendar, Circled Red

by TheArchaeologist



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Android Racism, Angst, Character Study, Connor Deserves Happiness, Connor-centric, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Son Relationship, Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Human vs Android, Hurt/Comfort, Parent Hank Anderson, Self-Reflection, Swearing, anger issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 09:14:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16344020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheArchaeologist/pseuds/TheArchaeologist
Summary: Having moved in with Hank after the Revolution, Connor must now learn how to get through the worst day of the year in the Anderson household - Cole's birthday.





	A Day on the Calendar, Circled Red

The first time Connor was at Hank's house for Cole's birthday, Hank got drunk.

This in of itself was not an unusual or surprising occurrence. Hank often got drunk with the insistent regularity of all addicts getting their poisonous fix. And to give the man a little credit, over the summer months he had slowly cut back to a few bottles per week rather than the few a day, but it seemed as though he was making up for lost time as he locked himself away in his room, three bottles of Black Lamb whiskey under arm and the TV loud on the wall.

Connor hadn't known what to do with himself, standing awkwardly in the middle of the living room, half of him temped to knock on the door, the other wanting to sneak back out and take Markus up on the offer of visiting New Jericho that he had politely turned down the day before last. 

After all, the other times Hank had drunk it was more out of habit that much else, or to forget a particularly bad case they had been working on throughout the week. But this was different, this was Cole's birthday. He would have been ten.

Cole had never been an easy subject in Hank’s house, and Connor had every doubt that it would ever be. Despite being designed specifically for “snooping”, as Hank so eloquently called it, deviancy and nearly a full year at the DPD had taught Connor much in the way of tactfulness. This wasn't like discussing Sumo, or Hank's on-again-off-again friendship with Fowler, or even his ex, this was Hank's dead son, someone he would never be able to see again and was all but officially diagnosed as suicidal over. 

Connor, in all frank terms, just simply couldn’t relate. He had never really lost anyone in such a sense, and he would never know what it was like to raise a child. If he attempted to talk with Hank now, it would be with the same professional detachment that he used in the office when he explains a death to a relative, or reveals the bloody truths of a case to the grieving family and red-eyed friends. Hank wouldn’t appreciate that in the slightest. He knows how Connor works.

So on that first birthday Connor had dutifully sat on the couch, Sumo beside him, and switched off his audio processors. The TV glowed with reality programmes and talk shows, and Connor's mind researched the new lead he wished to purchase Sumo, and neither of them saw Hank until the middle of the day the following morning, when he found Connor making bacon and eggs on the stove having phoned in to get them the day off.

The second of Cole's birthday's Connor spent with Hank, they were on a case.

This was something Hank was very vocal about.

“Why the fuck are we working at this time?” He grouched, his bad temper practically visible beneath his skin. “We better get fucking paid for this overtime.”

“I have already made the arrangements with Captain Fowler.” Connor informs him, his tone as non-threatening as he is able to muster, his social interaction programmes whirring at full capacity within his processor. He scans the surrounding area, eyeing the broken fence panel. “The killer fled the scene this way.”

“Great. Perfect. I’m elated.” Hank shuffles up beside him, arms crossed and words snippy. “You gonna do your bloodhound impression or not?”

Connor holds his teeth together within his mouth, saying nothing as he moves forward, clicking on his preconstruction systems. Hank trails behind him, whacking back the wooden panel with more force than necessary to get through. 

“The fuck they come this way for? There’s a perfectly good driveway the other side of the house.”

“The killer must have been trying to leave without being seen.” Connor voices, lifting his head from the disturbed trash to peer down a nearby alleyway, “It was early evening, so they would have wanted to avoid attent-”

“Yes, _thank you_ Mr Hunter,” Hank interrupts, all patience lost, “I got this job for a fucking reason you know.”

Mr Hunter.

As in, _Deviant_ Hunter.

That…Was a bit close too close to the mark for Connor’s liking. It’s the type of thing he would expect from a protester on the street, or Detective Reed. And, admittedly, if it had come from either of them he would have been able to shrug it off with more ease. They were ignorant, and hateful, and unwilling to change, why should Connor care about that?

Hank was different. Hank _got it_.

But today was Cole’s birthday, and he would have been eleven. Today, Hank got it, but promptly didn’t _care_.

“Then after you, Lieutenant.” Connor replies in his best machine voice, blinking dully at Hank. The man obviously startles at it, and something akin to regret fills his eyes, but he says nothing and just huffs, marching forward down the alleyway. Connor trots behind like the well trained poodle he is.

Next time they speak, he will drop the act. Hank’s dealing with a lot, and this case was sudden and unexpected and called in just as they were finishing for the day. When they get back to the house, he will quietly allow Hank to do whatever it is that he wishes to do, be it drink, cry, or lock himself away with his dog.

But for this exact moment, he wants to drive the point home.

The line has been drawn.

The third time, Cole’s twelfth birthday, they were at home. 

Connor had just come back in from letting Sumo out when Hank had all but pounced on him, blurting the question, “Do you wanna go to the cinema?”

He had blinked at Hank. “The cinema?”

“Yeah. Wanna go?”

Connor had seen the glug of whiskey Hank had tried to subtly consume while Connor was outside, apparently forgetting that there was a window. But despite that, Hank didn’t appear to be drunk.

He frowned, suspicious. “Do you want to?”

“ _I_ don’t care, I’m asking _you_.”

“To see what?”

“Whatever’s there.” Hank rolls his eyes, leaning back on one foot with his hands on his hips. “Look, if you don’t want t-”

“No, we can go.”

“Then let’s go!”

Hank is rarely this energetic, or this untactfully insistent.

What he is _actually_ asking is that Connor gives him a good enough excuse to go out for a while, forget what he’s trying to forget, and watch something he doesn’t need brain energy for. When they leave Hank’s keys were already in his pocket, and the door is locked with the desperate speed of ‘get me out now, before I breakdown’.

There’s fuck all on at the cinema.

“There’s fuck all on.” Hank states.

Connor eyes up their options. He steers clear of the more gory possibilities. Not today. “There’s _The Gum on the Bottom of Your Boot?"_ He suggests.

“Like hell I’m watching some pretentious shit for two hours.”

“ _Cloudless Skies?"_

“No.”

“ _The Elephant of Billericay?”_

“Connor, what the fuck?”

“I’ll watch whatever you want to watch, Hank.”

They end up seeing a historical drama based on a real woman, Mary Anning. Connor has already scanned through the reviews before the trailers have even finished, though seeing as those last exactly thirty-eight minutes that’s not a completely impressive feat. The reviews sit at a comfortable seventy-one percent, with criticism including that film falling into usual historical drama traps, with lots of overdramatic crying and perfect make-up. 

He’s not entirely sure why Hank chose this of all things. At home, he had never watched anything of this ilk, more often than not openly complaining on the genre. Even as the end credits roll, and sniffling viewers clamber out of their seats around them, Connor still hasn’t worked out why this is what they saw, his processor humming as he tries to calculate the best way to casually ask.

Hank beats him to it when he goes, during the car ride back, “Cole loved dinosaurs.”

“Did he?”

He nods. “He liked the ones that could fly.”

“Yes.” Connor says politely, carefully, “I can see the appeal.”

“He would have been twelve today…” Hank adds softly, but there’s no fury in his body language, no spit or fire. He is, instead, reflective, lonely, his tone full of longing and hurt.

“He’s still twelve, just not with us.”

Hank leans his head on his hand, propping his elbow up against the ledge where the car door meets the bottom of the driver window. His thumb absently rubs at his beard before pushing his hair back from his face.

“Do you believe in Heaven, Connor?”

His answer is more diplomatic than anything else. “I…I think that you and Cole will both end up the same, whatever happens in the end.”

A snort. “That’s the type of answer I would expect from someone like _you_.” A good-natured smile is flashed Connor’s way, and he returns it. The rest of the drive is in silence.

He thinks about it later than night, after Hank had, soberly, gone to bed.

The thing is, he wasn’t lying when he told Hank he’d be the same as Cole. Whether that was in Heaven or in the big nothing after the brain stops working, he would eventually join Cole in whatever happens to humans after life. Death was natural to all organic things, and one day they all returned to the earth.

Androids aren’t organic. They are of wire and electricity and Thirium. They are artificial, and hard, and they have nothing but base components to return to once shut down. They could be recycled, transferred, and reborn into new bodies with new minds.

Humans get to stop. If it’s Heaven, they get peace. If it’s nothing, they will be relieved of the stress of the world.

And Connor would like to meet Cole. He would like to see the little boy who loved dinosaurs and the child who was in turn loved so much by his Father, the bright blue eyes, the ruffled hair, the wide grin that was always excitedly explaining what he had learnt today when he was picked up after school.

But Connor no longer doubts there’s a Heaven for androids, he knows there’s not.

One day, Hank will join Cole, and Connor will be left to shoulder two ‘would-have-been’ birthdays alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Mary Anning was a fossil collector and palaeontologist in the 1800s, discovering many specimens in the Jurassic line of the Dorset (England) cliffs. Because she was a woman, she was banned from many scientific societies, though in 2010 the Royal Society included her in a list of 10 British women who have most influenced the history of science. It’s also rumoured she’s the cause of the “she sells seashells on the seashore” tongue-twister!
> 
> In other news, hey look I wrote something angsty about Connor, who else is surprised?


End file.
